Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. The Molecular Basis of Evolution and Disease: A Cold War Alliance.Edna Suárez-Díaz - 2019 - Journal of the History of Biology 52 (2):325-346.
    This paper extends previous arguments against the assumption that the study of variation at the molecular level was instigated with a view to solving an internal conflict between the balance and classical schools of population genetics. It does so by focusing on the intersection of basic research in protein chemistry and the molecular approach to disease with the enactment of global health campaigns during the Cold War period. The paper connects advances in research on protein structure and function as reflected (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • The quest for plausibility: A negative heuristic for science?R. W. Byrne - 1991 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14 (2):217-218.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Natural Selection, Adaptive Topographies and the Problem of Statistical Inference: The Moraba scurra Controversy Under the Microscope.Jean-Baptiste Grodwohl - 2017 - Journal of the History of Biology 50 (4):753-796.
    This paper gives a detailed narrative of a controversial empirical research in postwar population genetics, the analysis of the cytological polymorphisms of an Australian grasshopper, Moraba scurra. This research intertwined key technical developments in three research areas during the 1950s and 1960s: it involved Dobzhansky’s empirical research program on cytological polymorphisms, the mathematical theory of natural selection in two-locus systems, and the building of reliable estimates of natural selection in the wild. In the mid-1950s the cytologist Michael White discovered an (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Evolutionary Psychology: The Burdens of Proof.Elisabeth A. Lloyd - 1999 - Biology and Philosophy 14 (2):211-233.
    I discuss two types of evidential problems with the most widely touted experiments in evolutionary psychology, those performed by Leda Cosmides and interpreted by Cosmides and John Tooby. First, and despite Cosmides and Tooby's claims to the contrary, these experiments don't fulfil the standards of evidence of evolutionary biology. Second Cosmides and Tooby claim to have performed a crucial experiment, and to have eliminated rival approaches. Though they claim that their results are consistent with their theory but contradictory to the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   42 citations  
  • Chasing shadows: natural selection and adaptation.D. M. Walsh - 2000 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 31 (1):135-153.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   29 citations  
  • Modeling mechanisms.Stuart Glennan - 2005 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36 (2):443-464.
    Philosophers of science increasingly believe that much of science is concerned with understanding the mechanisms responsible for the production of natural phenomena. An adequate understanding of scientific research requires an account of how scientists develop and test models of mechanisms. This paper offers a general account of the nature of mechanical models, discussing the representational relationship that holds between mechanisms and their models as well as the techniques that can be used to test and refine such models. The analysis is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   135 citations  
  • The So-Called Extended Synthesis and Population Genetics.Lindsay R. Craig - 2010 - Biological Theory 5 (2):117-123.
    In recent years, several prominent biologists have pointed to the relatively new field of evolutionary developmental biology as evidence of an Extended Synthesis in evolutionary biology. More particularly, these biologists claim that theoretical and empirical EvoDevo research is extending the Modern Synthesis framework of evolutionary theory through investigation of evolutionarily important concepts that are not part of the framework developed during the 20th century. To describe the current changes in evolutionary biology as an Extended Synthesis, however, is incorrect. Through review (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   21 citations  
  • Lindsay Craig—The So-Called Extended Synthesis and Population Genetics : Extended Synthesis: Theory Expansion or Alternative?Massimo Pigliucci & Gerd B. Müller - 2010 - Biological Theory 5 (3):275-276.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Race and Biology.Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther - 2017 - In Linda Alcoff, Luvell Anderson & Paul Taylor (eds.), The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Race. Routledge.
    The ontology of race is replete with moral, political, and scientific implications. This book chapter surveys proposals about the reality of race, distinguishing among three levels of analysis: biogenomic, biological, and social. The relatively homogeneous structure of human genetic variation casts doubt upon the practice of postulating distinct biogenomic races that might be mapped onto socially recognized race categories.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Science is not always “self-correcting” : fact–value conflation and the study of intelligence.Nathan Cofnas - 2016 - Foundations of Science 21 (3):477-492.
    Some prominent scientists and philosophers have stated openly that moral and political considerations should influence whether we accept or promulgate scientific theories. This widespread view has significantly influenced the development, and public perception, of intelligence research. Theories related to group differences in intelligence are often rejected a priori on explicitly moral grounds. Thus the idea, frequently expressed by commentators on science, that science is “self-correcting”—that hypotheses are simply abandoned when they are undermined by empirical evidence—may not be correct in all (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • Interdisciplinary integration in biology? An overview.Wim J. van der Steen - 1990 - Acta Biotheoretica 38 (1):23-36.
    Philosophical theories about reduction and integration in science are at variance with what is happenign in science. A realistic approach to science show that possibilities for reduction and integration are limited. The classical ideal of a unified science has since long been rejected in philosophy. But the current emphasis on interdisciplinary integration in philosophy and in science shows that it survives in a different guise. It is necessary to redress the balance, specifically in biology. Methodological analysis shows that many of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • The mind, the lab, and the field: Three kinds of populations in scientific practice.Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther, Ryan Giordano, Michael D. Edge & Rasmus Nielsen - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 52:12-21.
    Scientists use models to understand the natural world, and it is important not to conflate model and nature. As an illustration, we distinguish three different kinds of populations in studies of ecology and evolution: theoretical, laboratory, and natural populations, exemplified by the work of R.A. Fisher, Thomas Park, and David Lack, respectively. Biologists are rightly concerned with all three types of populations. We examine the interplay between these different kinds of populations, and their pertinent models, in three examples: the notion (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • The Genomic Challenge to Adaptationism.Sahotra Sarkar - 2015 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (3):505-536.
    Since the late 1990s, the characterization of complete DNA sequences for a large and taxonomically diverse set of species has continued to gain in speed and accuracy. Sequence analyses have indicated a strikingly baroque structure for most eukaryotic genomes, with multiple repeats of DNA sequences and with very little of the DNA specifying proteins. Much of the DNA in these genomes has no known function. These results have generated strong interest in the factors that govern the evolution of genome architecture. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Characters as the units of evolutionary change.David Houle - 2000 - In Günter P. Wagner (ed.), The Character Concept in Evolutionary Biology. Academic Press. pp. 109--140.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Classical Ethology: concepts and implications for human ethology.Glendon Schubert - 1979 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 2 (1):44-46.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Ethology and sociobiology: a point of definition.Edward O. Wilson - 1979 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 2 (1):49-49.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • A confusion about innateness.Ned Block - 1979 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 2 (1):27-29.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The strategy of optimality revisited.Paul J. H. Schoemaker - 1991 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14 (2):237-245.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Should the quest for optimality worry us?Nils-Eric Sahlin - 1991 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14 (2):231-231.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Extremum descriptions, process laws and minimality heuristics.Elliott Sober - 1991 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14 (2):232-233.
    The examples and concepts that Shoemaker cites are rather heterogeneous. Some distinctions need to be drawn. An optimality thesis involves not just an ordering of options, but a value judgment about them. So let us begin by distinguishing minimality from optimality. And the concept of minimality can play a variety of roles, among which I distinguish between extremum descriptions, statements hypothesizing an optimizing process, and methodological recommendations. Finally, I consider how the three categories relate to Shoemaker’s question that “Who is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Optimality as a prescriptive tool.Alexander H. G. Rinnooy Kan - 1991 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14 (2):230-231.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The infinite regress of optimization.Philippe Mongin - 1991 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14 (2):229-230.
    A comment on Paul Schoemaker's target article in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 14 (1991), p. 205-215, "The Quest for Optimality: A Positive Heuristic of Science?" (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00066140). This comment argues that the optimizing model of decision leads to an infinite regress, once internal costs of decision (i.e., information and computation costs) are duly taken into account.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Organisms, scientists and optimality.Michael Davison - 1991 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14 (2):220-221.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Optimality and human memory.John R. Anderson - 1991 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14 (2):215-216.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Optimality as an evaluative standard in the study of decision-making.Jonathan Baron - 1991 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14 (2):216-216.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The quest for optimality: A positive heuristic of science?Paul J. H. Schoemaker - 1991 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14 (2):205-215.
    This paper examines the strengths and weaknesses of one of science's most pervasive and flexible metaprinciples;optimalityis used to explain utility maximization in economics, least effort principles in physics, entropy in chemistry, and survival of the fittest in biology. Fermat's principle of least time involves both teleological and causal considerations, two distinct modes of explanation resting on poorly understood psychological primitives. The rationality heuristic in economics provides an example from social science of the potential biases arising from the extreme flexibility of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   43 citations  
  • Pop sociobiology and meta-ethics.Merrilee H. Salmon - 1987 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 10 (1):83-83.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Folk psychology versus pop sociobiology.Eric Alden Smith - 1987 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 10 (1):85-86.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Darwin and human nature.Donald Symons - 1987 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 10 (1):89-89.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   22 citations  
  • The search for an alternative to the sociobiological hypothesis.Peter J. Richerson & Robert T. Boyd - 1981 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 4 (2):248-249.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   28 citations  
  • Possible mechanisms for a multiple-level model of evolution.H. C. Plotkin & F. J. Odling - 1981 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 4 (2):257-268.
    Many of the commentaries cohere around two major points of criticism. The first is that we have omitted discussion of the mechanisms that are assumed to operate at levels 2, 3, and 4.Campbell, Cloak, Dewsbury, Eckberg, Mundinger, Pulliam, Richerson & Boyd, Slobodkin, Simon, Williams, andWahlstenall make comments that bear on this point. The second point is that we have omitted discussion of the fact that "organisms change the environment by their activities" and thereby modify the selection pressures that act on (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • How to Put Questions to Nature.Matti Sintonen - 1990 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 27:267-284.
    In this paper I propose to examine, and in part revive, a time-honoured perspective to inquiry in general and scientific explanation in particular. The perspective is to view inquiry as a search for answers to questions. If there is anything that deserves to be called a working scientist's view of his or her daily work, it surely is that he or she phrases questions and attempts to find satisfactory answers to them.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • From exaptation to radical niche construction in biological and technological complex systems.Pierpaolo Andriani & Jack Cohen - 2013 - Complexity 18 (5):7-14.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • The Hypothesis of a Genetic Protolanguage: an Epistemological Investigation. [REVIEW]Gregory Katz - 2008 - Biosemiotics 1 (1):57-73.
    Progress in molecular biology has revealed profound relations between linguistic and genomic sciences, mainly through advances in bioinformatics. The structural symmetries between biochemical and verbal syntaxes raise the question of their origins: did they emerge independently, or did one arise from the other? Does the genetic code contain the traces of a protolanguage, a universal grammar whose gradual evolution and successive mutations progressively led to the polymorphism of natural languages? To explore this question, we review the isomorphism of the genetic (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Bird-song dialects and human-language dialects: A common basis?Ralph W. Fasold - 1985 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8 (1):104-104.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Limited dispersal between dialects?: Hypotheses testable in the field.Donald E. Kroodsma - 1985 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8 (1):108-109.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  • Bird-song dialects and human-language dialects.William G. Moulton - 1985 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8 (1):110-111.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Dialects in primates?Charles T. Snowdon - 1985 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8 (1):116-117.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Bird-song dialects: Filling in the gaps.Eliot A. Brenowitz - 1985 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8 (1):101-102.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Realism, Antirealism, and Conventionalism about Race.Jonathan Michael Kaplan & Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther - 2014 - Philosophy of Science 81 (5):1039-1052.
    This paper distinguishes three concepts of "race": bio-genomic cluster/race, biological race, and social race. We map out realism, antirealism, and conventionalism about each of these, in three important historical episodes: Frank Livingstone and Theodosius Dobzhansky in 1962, A.W.F. Edwards' 2003 response to Lewontin (1972), and contemporary discourse. Semantics is especially crucial to the first episode, while normativity is central to the second. Upon inspection, each episode also reveals a variety of commitments to the metaphysics of race. We conclude by interrogating (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   19 citations  
  • Plant‐microbe symbioses: new insights into common roots.Pedro T. Lima, Vitor G. Faria, Pedro Patraquim, Alessandro C. Ramos, José A. Feijó & Élio Sucena - 2009 - Bioessays 31 (11):1233-1244.
    Arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM), a type of plant‐fungal endosymbiosis, and nodulation, a bacterial‐plant endosymbiosis, are the most ubiquitous symbioses on earth. Recent findings have established part of a shared genetic basis underlying these interactions. Here, we approach root endosymbioses through the lens of the homology and modularity concepts aiming at further clarifying the proximate and ultimate causes for the establishment of these biological systems. We review the genetics that underlie interspecific signaling and its concomitant shift in genetic programs for either partner. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Sound transmission, signal salience, and song dialects.Fernando Nottebohm - 1985 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8 (1):112-113.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The So-Called Extended Synthesis and Population Genetics.Lindsay R. Craig - 2010 - Biological Theory 5 (2):117-123.
    In recent years, several prominent biologists have pointed to the relatively new field of evolutionary developmental biology (EvoDevo) as evidence of an Extended Synthesis in evolutionary biology. More particularly, these biologists claim that theoretical and empirical EvoDevo research is extending the Modern Synthesis framework of evolutionary theory through investigation of evolutionarily important concepts that are not part of the framework developed during the 20th century. To describe the current changes in evolutionary biology as an Extended Synthesis, however, is incorrect. Through (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   23 citations  
  • Genome reduction as the dominant mode of evolution.Yuri I. Wolf & Eugene V. Koonin - 2013 - Bioessays 35 (9):829-837.
    A common belief is that evolution generally proceeds towards greater complexity at both the organismal and the genomic level, numerous examples of reductive evolution of parasites and symbionts notwithstanding. However, recent evolutionary reconstructions challenge this notion. Two notable examples are the reconstruction of the complex archaeal ancestor and the intron‐rich ancestor of eukaryotes. In both cases, evolution in most of the lineages was apparently dominated by extensive loss of genes and introns, respectively. These and many other cases of reductive evolution (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • The Fate of Darwinism: Evolution After the Modern Synthesis.David J. Depew & Bruce H. Weber - 2011 - Biological Theory 6 (1):89-102.
    We trace the history of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, and of genetic Darwinism generally, with a view to showing why, even in its current versions, it can no longer serve as a general framework for evolutionary theory. The main reason is empirical. Genetical Darwinism cannot accommodate the role of development (and of genes in development) in many evolutionary processes. We go on to discuss two conceptual issues: whether natural selection can be the “creative factor” in a new, more general framework (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • Pluralism in evolutionary controversies: styles and averaging strategies in hierarchical selection theories.Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther, Michael J. Wade & Christopher C. Dimond - 2013 - Biology and Philosophy 28 (6):957-979.
    Two controversies exist regarding the appropriate characterization of hierarchical and adaptive evolution in natural populations. In biology, there is the Wright-Fisher controversy over the relative roles of random genetic drift, natural selection, population structure, and interdemic selection in adaptive evolution begun by Sewall Wright and Ronald Aylmer Fisher. There is also the Units of Selection debate, spanning both the biological and the philosophical literature and including the impassioned group-selection debate. Why do these two discourses exist separately, and interact relatively little? (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Extended Synthesis: Theory Expansion or Alternative?Gerd B. Müller & Massimo Pigliucci - 2010 - Biological Theory 5 (3):275-276.
    A response to Lindsay Craig's essay, The So-Called Extended Synthesis and Population Genetics.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Making race out of nothing : psychologically constrained social roles.Ron Mallon & Daniel Kelly - 2012 - In Harold Kincaid (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Social Science. Oxford University Press.
    Race is one of the most common variables in the social sciences, used to draw correlations between racial groups and numerous other important variables such as education, healthcare outcomes, aptitude tests, wealth, employment and so forth. But where concern with race once reflected the view that races were biologically real, many, if not most, contemporary social scientists have abandoned the idea that racial categories demarcate substantial, intrinsic biological differences between people. This, in turn, raises an important question about the significance (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Why the problem of reductionism in biology has implications for economics.Geoffrey M. Hodgson - 1993 - World Futures 37 (2):69-90.
    For several decades, economists have been preoccupied with an attempt to place their entire subject on the ‘sound microfoundations’ of general equilibrium theory, with its individualistic premises. However, this project has run into seemingly intractable problems. This essay examines underlying questions such as the appropriate building block of analysis and the structure of explanation in economics. The examination of biology is found to be instructive, due to debates concerning the limitations of reductionism within that discipline. The final part of the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The new mutation theory of phenotypic evolution.Masatoshi Nei - 2007 - Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 104 (30):12335-12242.
    Recent studies of developmental biology have shown that the genes controlling phenotypic characters expressed in the early stage of development are highly conserved and that recent evolutionary changes have occurred primarily in the characters expressed in later stages of development. Even the genes controlling the latter characters are generally conserved, but there is a large component of neutral or nearly neutral genetic variation within and between closely related species. Phenotypic evolution occurs primarily by mutation of genes that interact with one (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations